From The Wall Street Journal:
Facebook Inc.’s chances of getting back into China appeared to take a rare turn for the better when an employee noticed an official posting online: Beijing authorities had granted it a license to open a representative office in two office-tower suites in the capital.
Such permits typically give Western firms an initial China beachhead. This one, which Facebook won in late 2015, could have been a sign Beijing was ready to give the company another chance to connect with China’s roughly 700 million internet users, reopening the market as the social-media giant’s U.S.-growth prospects dimmed.
There was a catch. Facebook’s license was for three months, unusually short. Facebook executives found the limitation unexpected and frustrating, people familiar with the episode said.
Facebook never opened the office. The official posting disappeared and now exists as a ghost in cached versions of the government website. “We did, at one point in time, plan to have an office,” said Facebook spokeswoman Charlene Chian, “but we don’t today.”
The episode is part of Facebook’s running tale of woe in China, where it has been trying to set the stage for a return. Blocked on China’s internet since 2009, Facebook has courted Chinese officials, made Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg more visible in China, hired a well-connected China-policy chief and begun developing technology that could cull content the Communist Party deems unacceptable.
. . . .
It has made no visible headway. And as time passes, Facebook is watching from the outside as Chinese social-media giants mop up the market that might have been its own. Weibo, along with Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat and QQ, are now dominant in China, and it may be too late for Facebook, said industry executives including Kai-Fu Lee, Google’s former China head and now CEO of Innovation Works, a Chinese incubator.
“At this stage and time with WeChat, Weibo and other products, it’s hopeless,” Mr. Lee said.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire)
They should be happy to be out of China: China is now using social media with a vengeance to control who is ‘proper’ by whether they have contact with only ‘proper’ people, and none with people the government disapproves of.
It horrified my Millenial daughter when she was describing the totalitarian control exerted on her Chinese couterparts.
Another tool for the Communists to misuse against their own people.
Well, at least they are recovering all of that development money for use in censoring their US site to what Zuckerberg likes to see.
It’s all about ‘control’ of who can say or see what, and facebonk can’t do it to their requirements — not and still actually be facebonk.
I’m guessing the Chinese don’t want all their stuff handed over to the NSA, either.